CS Seminar
Friday, February 28, 2014
2:30 PM
Carnegie Hall, Room 113
USING BIOMECHANICS TO UNDERSTAND AND PREVENT INJURIES AND ENHANCE PERFORMANCE IN SPORT
Dr. Scott Landry
Associate Professor, Kinesiology
Acadia University
Abstract
Rupturing the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) is one of the most devastating injuries an athlete can sustain while playing sports that involve a significant amount of side-cutting, jump-landing and decelerating. Basketball, soccer and volleyball are all sports where athletes can rupture their ACL in a non-contact manner and unfortunately for the female athlete, they are 3-8 times more likely to sustain such an injury compared to their male counterparts. An ACL injury generally involves an invasive surgery and intensive rehabilitation to return to sport and such an injury also often leads to accelerated osteoarthritic changes to the inflicted knee. Managing this injury and the associated osteoarthritis costs the health care system billions of dollars each year. Research in the new mLAB is focusing on detailed neuromuscular and biomechanical analyses of young athletes as they perform unanticipated side-cutting and jump-landing maneuvers. The long term goal will be to use identified risk factors to enhance current injury prevention programs aimed at reducing the incidence of these devastating injuries. Analyzing human movement uses technologies such as high speed motion capture, force platforms, electromyography and multivariate statistical techniques such as principal component analysis (PCA) to capture, process, analyze and manage the vast quantities of data required to carry out this research.
About the Presenter
Dr. Scott Landry is an Associate Professor in Kinesiology at Acadia, with adjunct appointments in the Engineering and Biology Departments at Acadia along with the Schools of Biomedical Engineering and Health and Human Performance at Dalhousie University. Scott teaches applied human anatomy and biomechanics and his research focuses on neuromuscular and biomechanical analyses of athletes as they perform athletic maneuvers such as side-cutting, jumping, landing and running, with an emphasis on preventing injuries and enhancing performance in sport. Scott completed his biology and engineering degrees at Acadia, his PhD in biomedical engineering at Dalhousie and his post doctorate fellowship at the University of Calgary. Scott has done biomechanical research for shoe companies such as Nike and Masai Barefoot Technology and he currently continues to conduct research for adidas out of Acadia’s new John MacIntyre mLAB (motion Laboratory of Applied Biomechanics).
Everyone is welcome to attend